Despite Trump's spin, North Korea is no closer to getting rid of its nukes

A South Korean man reads a newspaper reporting the US President Trump meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on June 12, 2018 in Seoul, South Korea.

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Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

The goal of denuclearization is just as far away as it
was before President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un met, a
national security expert told Business Insider.

Trump has praised the "great progress" he and Kim made
towards denuclearization at Tuesday's summit in
Singapore.

But the joint statement the two world leaders signed is
little different from April's Panmunjom Declaration and
years of pledges from North Korea.

Despite a joint statement signed by President Donald Trump and
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the goal of denuclearization is
"just as far off today as it was yesterday," a national security
expert has told Business Insider.

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At Tuesday's summit, Trump told reporters that the
negotiations had gone "better than anybody could have expected."
In the afternoon, he and Kim issued a statement
which said the North Korean leader "reaffirmed his firm and
unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula."

And since leaving Singapore, the president has
tweeted
that "great progress was made on the denuclearization of
North Korea." "The world has taken a big step back
from potential nuclear catastrophe! No more rocket launches,
nuclear testing or research!" he also tweeted.

But Ned Price, who served in the Obama administration as a
special assistant to the president and as a National Security
Council spokesperson, told Busines Insider that in reality
essentially nothing has changed.

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"Diplomacy will always be better than war, and we should
hope that continued engagement moves the ball forward toward
denuclearization. But that goal is just as far off today as it
was yesterday," Price said.

Of four pledges made in Trump and Kim's joint statement,
the text regarding denuclearization reads: "Reaffirming the April
27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards
complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

In a
press conference, Trump said he spoke with Kim about
verifying any denuclearization, a longstanding staple of the US's
policy, but said there was "there was no time" to include those
details in the statement.

This means that, in writing, Kim pledged to do little more
than he had already promised when he signed an agreement with
South Korean President Moon Jae-in nearly two months ago. In that
agreement, both North and South Korea said they have a "common
goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a
nuclear-free Korean Peninsula."

And North Korea has offered strikingly similar pledges before -
the first being made
26 years ago.

"We shouldn't pretend we haven't seen this movie before. We have.
We know how it could end unless the Trump administration is
capable of writing a different ending. Nothing we've seen to-date
should give us confidence that's the case," said Price, who
served in the CIA for 11 years before but
resigned after working under Trump and is now the Director of
Policy at the think tank National Security Action, which opposes
some of Trump's foreign policies.

Price added: "What could be more Trumpian than an effort to brand
something that's been tried by previous American presidents as
unprecedented and historic? Ignorance of history can make a
president look foolish... but that same ignorance can be
dangerous, as when it rears its head in negotiations about the
most pressing national security challenge we face."